2013 F1 season

Pirelli will bring a different tyre allocation for the Korean, Japanese and Indian Grand Prix to those used at the races in 2012.

A more conservative selection will be used at the Korea and Suzuka circuits, whereas a softer combination will be used in India.

The hard tyre will not be taken to the Indian Grand Prix for the first time since the race was added to the calendar in 2011. Teams will have the soft and medium tyres for that race.

Pirelli will bring their hardest ever tyre combination for Suzuka, using the most durable compounds in their range: medium and hard. At Korea – as in Singapore this weekend – the medium will be used alongside the super-soft tyre.

@vettel1 If the teams are stupid enough to complain about tyres bursting mid race; when they’re putting a rear left tyre on the rear right side of the car, then they deserve failures. It’s not Pirelli’s fault the teams don’t listen to the reccomended use settings etc.

So despite the change back to the kevlar structure providing us with snoozefest racing we’re going more conservative on tyres at Korea and Japan?

This is on top of the claims that last year the tyre allocations got overly conservative towards the end of the season as Pirelli were petrified that aggressive tyres could have “affected the championship” despite the fact that providing more conservative tyres tips it one way over the other.

I guess they’ve had enough negative press this season and it’d be much easier to just give Red Bull the tyres they want to consolidate both championships again.

@alec-glen Pirelli changed the tyres mid-season with 2 races in mind, Spa and Suzuka. Now Spa has already gone, Pirelli naturally want to try and pick conservatively for Suzuka aswell.. I also think Korea has a few corners that are hard on the tyres. Meanwhile, India isn’t as bad on tyres, so they’ve gone softer…

@keeleyobsessed They were overly conservative last year which made for boring 1 and 2 stop races from race 15 onwards (2 stop in Japan,Korea and 1 stop in India, Abu Dhabi, USA). Going more conservative when their remit in F1 is to provide challenging tyres providing split strategy 2 and 3 stop racing isn’t a good move in my opinion.

@beejis60 They are in essence the same tyres as last year then which taking into account the teams’ development rates is conservative, which isn’t what they preach for the first half of the season.

@lite992 If you go back to Pirelli’s brief which is famously to provide tyres that degrade like it’s Canada 2010, by only doing that half a season they are influencing the championship especially when when you take into account who’s doing what lobbying.

They’re *almost* the same tires as last year as Pirelli say this year’s medium is last year’s soft. Then this year’s super soft would be like a super super soft… In essence, it’s less conservative as last year’s race tires.

@vettel1 – I think it’s the other way around isn’t it? they have 6 primes and 5 options and have to return 1 prime before FP2 and 1 of each before FP3. So they would have had more softer tires than harder compounds.
Anyway you’re right it’s not a mistake but was really that way in 11.

@vettel1
Other way around.
Teams are allocated 6 sets of primes and 5 sets of options.
But yeah, Pirelli made the soft compound the prime in 2011 so that they had more soft running on an unknown circuit.

I am happy for India. The track has had boring 1-stop races so far. In fact, I think no one apart from Vettel has even led a lap there. Hopefully, the softer allocation allows for more strategy variance

This is a mediocre descision by Pirelli, I will always defend them if someone says they built **** but this I cant defend. The tyres are now safe enough, there is no reason why we cant stay on the same course just like in the earlier part of the season. The tyres needed the overhaul the got but in the end Rb still got more conservative tyre choices they begged for.

Then again we saw the same thing in 2011 and 2012, so none of this should be a real surprise.